Burson-Marsteller Digs Itself A Deeper Hole; Deletes Critical Comments On Its Facebook Page

from the crisis-management? dept

Fri, May 13th 2011 4:29pm — Mike Masnick

Burson-Marsteller, the PR giant, who is often used as a "crisis management" PR firm for clients undergoing bad press appears to need some outside help in handling its own crisis management. The company hasn't done a very good job responding to getting called out for trying to smear Google with questionable attacks and ghostwritten op-eds, at the behest of Facebook. The company has sort of but not really apologized, claiming that the smear campaign was not "authorized or intended." They just wanted people to "verify" the information. Uh, yeah.

And, now it's gotten worse, as Burson has been caught deleting critical posts from its Facebook page, forcing the company to sort of, but not really, apologize again, and say they'll reach out to the person who had posted a link to some of the coverage of the company's Facebook wall, and tell her she can put it back up. The company also tried to brush it off by saying that its Facebook page had been receiving "a lot of profanity," and that was all they were seeking to delete. That a basic story about the controversy got deleted in the process... well... I guess that's just collateral damage.

Filed Under: crisis, openness, pr
Companies: burson marsteller, facebook, google

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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 13 May 2011 @ 4:45pm

Puhlease
Burson-Marsteller, the PR giant...

The 'PR giant' with the domain name bm.com.

(Stole that from Gruber.)
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Designerfx (profile), 13 May 2011 @ 5:54pm

don't forget that facebook is working with microsoft
or did people neglect to remember the deal between them recently?

having facebook then go after google kinda makes a lot more sense now, doesn't it.
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Kaden (profile), 13 May 2011 @ 7:18pm

Re: Puhlease
My ex was an NNEB... Even now, those two letters have only one possible meaning to me.

Also: You bastard, my screen's gonna smell like beer for weeks.
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nokings, 13 May 2011 @ 11:12pm

Are you surprised?
Especially when this guy, Dallas Lawrence is the head of Global Digital at Burson.
http://mytown.mercurynews.com/archives/sunnyvalesun/12.18.96/impeachment.html
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abc gum, 14 May 2011 @ 6:43am

"The company hasn't done a very good job responding to getting called out for trying to smear Google with questionable attacks and ghostwritten op-eds"

BM should simply claim it was "Not Intended to be a Factual Statement"
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DannyB (profile), 14 May 2011 @ 11:57am

Burson-Marsteller used by Microsoft to smear Google in 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119059784609936938.html

SEPTEMBER 24, 2007

Microsoft Goes Behind the Scenes
Public-Relations Proxy Aims to Gather Opposition To Google-DoubleClick Deal

Yes, Burson-Marsteller, the company to go to when you want to smear Google!
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